April 4, 2012

.I Have A Problem.

I have a problem of always wanting to be in control. Not necessarily of others, that type of pressure tends to give me anxiety, but more control over my own world. I am the strictest rule keeper of myself, and if I happen to break one of my rules, I'm the harshest disciplinarian. I beat myself to a pulp. It's just the way it is, but I am working on it.

When G and I decided to start a family, it came as a hard experience to learn that making babies was not in my control. I was not in control of my body. I was not in control. The increasing anxiety and decreasing mood as we waited months on end for good news boiled down to that fact, "I am not in control." This is one of the hardest lessons I've ever had to learn.

When months passed by and we received word after word of friends we love who were expecting, it became harder and harder to bear internally. I know, I am young and this happens, but when I've worked my entire life to have such control and discipline to get where I want, this was new... frightening... devastating for me. G tried to be so positive, that our time would come, and it's easier for me to speak of this challenge now that Dylan is quickly broaching her first birthday. But I think this message is important for someone else to read.

Don't be so hard on yourself when you're not the one in control.

I read this post a few weeks past that had me in tears, going back to the days that I used to cry every time I heard of a new person being pregnant. I know it's selfish. I know that others struggle far harder, for far longer. This knowledge still didn't make our experience any easier while in the trenches for nearly a year. This post spoke to me most when I read the words, "I feverishly prayed for God to buy into my plans." This sentence hit me in the gut. I prayed like mad during that time, but I realize later that what I was really doing was pleading my case. Although I thought otherwise, I was not fully trusting God. I just wasn't. I wanted the control and couldn't cope when that control wasn't delivered on a silver platter.

This is still something I struggle with, this fight for control, but you know what? When the resolution comes, it makes it that much more powerful to know that it wasn't all my doing. That little ole me doesn't have that kind of an effect on the world; that I don't always have to lean on my own understanding. That I am sincere in every happiness I share here about Dylan and G because she is not just something we worked for, or something that came easy. Dylan is love, learning, understanding, fear, honor, blood, sweat, and tears. And it's in this that one of my biggest life's failures can be to take any of this for granted.

1 comment:

This is such a wonderful post Jessica - thank you for sharing it. I'm not quite to that point yet - but I share the control freak personality with you, and I have this idea that I am going to be able to plan it all out exactly down to my children's birthdays, but I am quite sure that's not true ;-)